of shed teeth strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of
scrags of shell in the wrack of a tide.

"Do not fear, my son!" cried the voice of the Bodhisattva;--"only
the strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!"


Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the
clouds beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls
between,--up-slanting out of sight.

Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth
in the light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the
horror of stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous
depth, and the terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed
upon the pilgrim, and held his feet,--so that suddenly all power
departed from him, and he moaned like a sleeper in dreams.

"Hasten, hasten, my son!" cried the Bodhisattva: "the day is
brief, and the summit is very far away."

But the pilgrim shrieked,--"I fear! I fear unspeakably!--and the
power has departed from me!"

"The power will return, my son," made answer the Bodhisattva....
"Look now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what
you see."

"I cannot," cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; "I dare
not look beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but